Why do you need two hearing aids?

Published 4:29 pm, Saturday, March 9, 2013

To answer this with, “Well, you have two ears,” would be overly simplistic, although that is the root of the answer.

If you have two ears with hearing loss that would receive benefit from hearing aids (these are important distinctions), you need two hearing aids. Here is an experiment you can do at home to demonstrate the importance of bilateral hearing, or hearing out of both ears.

First, gently close one ear by pressing the little fleshy part in front of your ear canal (known as the tragus) into your ear canal—just a little. Do not apply pressure, and certainly do not hurt yourself. Just close the ear canal enough to eliminate sound. Do this for about 10 minutes while you watch TV, listen to music or talk to your spouse. After a full ten minutes, remove your finger. See what a difference that makes!

The main advantage to bilateral hearing aids—if you need them and can benefit from them—is localization, or knowing where a sound is coming from. This is just about impossible with only one ear. It’s not just convenience; it can be a safety issue in the case of sirens, screams, baby’s cry and others.

Also, using both ears in a noisy environment helps you hear better because bilateral hearing permits you to selectively attend to the desired signal while “squelching, “ or paying less attention to undesired sounds.

Bilateral hearing aids also allow a quality of spaciousness or high fidelity to sounds, which cannot occur with monaural hearing. Understanding speech clearly, particularly in challenging and noisy situations, is easier while using both ears. Additionally, using two hearing aids allows people to speak with you from either side of your head, not just your “good” side.

In short, you just cannot hear as well using only one ear. Studies have shown that children with one normal ear and one deaf ear are ten times more likely to repeat a grade as compared to children with two normally-hearing ears. Additionally, we know that if you have two ears with hearing impairment, and you wear only one hearing aid, the unaided ear is likely to lose word recognition more quickly than the ear wearing the hearing aid.

This means that, even if you later decide to get a second hearing aid, there will be a longer than normal period of adjustment.

Please take all this into consideration when getting hearing aids. Two, in this case, is exponentially better than one.

Audio Acoustics, a full-ser vice hearing center owned by Orland Purcell, Au. D., has been in business since 1975. Ginger Peugh, Au. D., is his associate. They offer industrial hearing conservation, diagnostic audiology and a wide variety of hearing aids. They are located at 2101 North Midland Drive, Suite Four. The phone number is 689-4327.